the Week of Proper 28 / Ordinary 33
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Bible Dictionaries
Form
Hastings' Dictionary of the New Testament
or The first occurrence of this word in the Epistles is in Romans 2:20, where St. Paul speaks of the Jew as ‘having in the law the form of knowledge and of the truth.’ The word he uses is μόρφωσις, which is found again only in 2 Timothy 3:5 (‘having the form of godliness’), where it clearly has a disparaging sense and may be taken to mean an affectation of or an aiming at the μορφή of godliness. μορφή itself is that which manifests the essence or inward nature of a thing, ‘outward form as determined by inward substance,’ in contrast with σχῆμα which means ‘outward form as opposed to inward substance.’ μόρφωσις occupies an intermediate position between these words; the Apostle hesitates to use σχῆμα, yet he will not use μορφή. The term happily expresses his meaning in Romans 2:20 -the Law, so far as it went, was an expression, one might even say an embodiment, of Divine truth. It did not go far enough to be called μορφή, yet it was more than more outward fashion (σχῆμα). There is not the same note of disparagement about the word here as in 2 Timothy 3:5; it is rather one of incompleteness.
We may turn now to the well-known use of the word μορφή itself in Philippians 2:6 f., where Christ is said to have been in the form of God and to have taken the form of a slave. The first thing to bear in mind is that St. Paul used the common speech of his day, and this word, like many others, had wandered far from the accurate metaphysical sense in which it was used by Plato and Aristotle. The lengthy and thorough discussions of the word and its relation to οὐσία, φύσις, εἶδος, and similar terms by Lightfoot (philippians4, 1878, p. 127ff.) and E. H. Gifford (The Incarnation, 1897, p. 22ff.) remain as examples of fine scholarship, but it is now generally recognized that St. Paul uses μορφή here in an easy, popular sense, much as we use the word ‘nature.’ Several passages in the Septuagint (e.g. Job 4:16, Daniel 5:6, Wisdom of Solomon 18:1-4, 4 Maccabees 15:4) witness to the same tendency-μορφή is the appearance or look of some one, that by which onlookers judge. But, while St. Paul avoids metaphysical speculations on the relation of the Son to the Father, he implies here, as elsewhere, that Christ has, as it were, the same kind of existence as God. The closest parallels are εἰκὼν τοῦ θεοῦ (Colossians 1:15) and πλοῦσιος ὤν (2 Corinthians 8:9), the latter passage reminding us of the great antithesis in Philippians 2:6-7 between the μορφὴ θεοῦ and the μορφὴ δούλου. δοῦλος stands for man in opposition to God and must not be pressed literally. It is worth noting that St. Paul insists on Christ’s direct exchange of the one form for the other, in contrast to Gnostic views which represented Him as passing through a series of transformations. To return to μορφὴ, which here denotes, as it usually does, an adequate and accurate expression of the underlying being, and so points to the Divinity of the pre-existing Christ, one may, without any detraction from this honour, point out that St. Paul always regards the Death and Resurrection of Christ as adding something to it. It is after the return to glory that Christ is declared the Son of God ‘with power’ (Romans 1:3-4), and becomes Lord (Philippians 2:9-11). It only remains to point out that Christ’s assumption of the ‘form’ or ‘nature’ of a servant does not imply that His ‘Ego,’ the basis of His personality, was changed. (See further article Christ, Christology, p. 193f.)
Before leaving this word, we may notice the use of the verb μορφόω in a beautifully expressive passage, Galatians 4:19, where the Apostle adopts the figure of a child-bearing mother; he is in travail for the spiritual birth of Christ within his Galatian friends, straining every power to shape their inner man afresh into the image of Christ. The use of the word ‘form’ in Revelation 9:20 and 1 Timothy 2:13 (in each case translating πλάσσω) calls for no remark.
Two other passages in the Epistles demand consideration. In Romans 6:17 St. Paul is glad that the Romans have become sincerely obedient ‘to that form of teaching’ to which they were delivered; and in 2 Timothy 1:13 there is an exhortation to ‘hold the form (Revised Version ‘pattern’) of sound words which thou hast heard from me.’ The word used in Rom. is τύπος, which must be taken in its usual Pauline sense of ‘pattern,’ ‘standard.’ No special type of doctrine is meant (see F. J. A. Hort, Prolegomena to Romans and Ephesians, 1895, p. 32); the reference is to a course of simple instruction, like that in the first part of the Didache (‘The Two Ways’), which preceded baptism. In 2 Tim. we have the compound ὑποτύπωσις, lit. [Note: literally, literature.] an ‘outline sketch,’ and so a ‘pattern’ or ‘example.’ It is the emphatic word in the sentence, and the meaning is best brought out by the translation, ‘Hold as a pattern of healthy teaching, in faith and love, what you heard from me.’
A. J. Grieve.
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Hastings, James. Entry for 'Form'. Hastings' Dictionary of the New Testament. https://www.studylight.org/dictionaries/eng/hdn/f/form.html. 1906-1918.
